Anyone know about the 5 year requirement?

I know a lot of Bars require you to finish law school within 5 years. Also a lot of law schools follow this by requiring the same thing. I was wondering if you could ever finish it outside the timeframe if you did not want to take the Bar...

I think thev5 years is more of a school requirment. Michigan is 6 years and I was tolf that the ABA rules allow up to 7.

Do you know if you take longer if there's still a way to finish the JD or is that a requirement they won't be flexible with?

CA and I am coming up on 4 years, just in money problems and wondering if I will be giving up the chance to finish the JD (taking the Bar is a separate issue) if I can't finish it within the exact 5 year period...

Just want to be able to finish my degree instead of leaving it from ever being finished. Taking the Bar and those requirements I can deal with, but I'd be pretty mad if I couldn't finish in any way if I couldn't get back to school and finish it within the next year...

cooleylawstudent

You seem to be more concerned with the JD requirments than the bar requirments, which is odd since a JD is useless without the bar and most(if not all) how policies that reflect the bar. If you think you dont qualify for the bar but want a JD anyways, ask your school, they might have a special policy for you. A few have what's called an "executive JD" which is a nonBar JD.

For the record, CA like all other states has bar requirments. I'm told harder than most.

For the record, CA like all other states has bar requirments. I'm told harder than most.

The CA bar exam is generally considered to be the hardest; their requirements to actually sit for the bar are very lax.

I don't have any factual knowledge of this but a colleague of mine from CA told me that while the CA Bar is a bit more difficult than most states, the extremely low pass rate is partly attributable to people who sit for the bar but don't have traditional legal training. So I think it is a bit of both.